Visiting the Coast...

Coastline

1240 Brace Road

Cherry Hill, NJ 08034

coastlinenj.com/ 

I went out on a Friday in the fall to a place in Cherry Hill with some coworkers of mine to celebrate one of their birthdays. I hadn’t been to Coastline since I started working at my job over two years ago. I was pretty excited to go back because they have a large menu with some good options on it. It’s a huge place. They have a large salad bar, a nice bar, and tons of seating area for customers. They told us that they had two funerals coming in and most of the restaurant was reserved, but they hooked us up with a booth and we all sat down.

I perused the menu for a bit before landing on my choice of the ancho chicken quesadilla. It sounded pretty tasty and didn’t sound too heavy, which was good because I knew I was going out to dinner later. We sat back and had some laughs while we waited for our food to come out. When it arrived at the table it looked and smelled phenomenal. The tortillas were super crispy on the outside and seemed to be a whole-wheat tortilla. The chicken was cooked nicely, and was enveloped in a sea of ancho flavor. The cheese was ooey-gooey, and the peppers and onions dispersed throughout were tasty little flavor additions. It was a really fantastic quesadilla. Dipping it into the sour cream and salsa was just another wonderful addition to its flavor. 

They served a small plate of steak fries with the quesadilla as well. There was a perfect amount of fries on the plate, which was nice because I didn’t want to eat very many of them. The fries had a nice crispy crunch to them, while still steaming hot and moist on the inside.

Two and a half pints for Coastline. Coastline is a cool little place to go grab lunch in Cherry Hill. They have something for everyone, and they do pretty well in terms of execution. Give it a try if you are in the area and let me know what you think! Cheers!

A Classic Reborn...

Catelli Duo

12101 Town Center Boulevard

Voorhees, NJ 08043

www.catelliduo.com/ 

I was pretty bummed when Catelli's closed a few months ago. My sadness was reversed however when I heard that the chef would be opening a new place with two of my uncle's friends becoming partners with him. My uncle decided we should all go for my aunt's birthday to try it together about two weeks after it opened. 

The restaurant décor is absolutely incredible. It really is beautiful inside. The bar is great, the outdoor fire pit is a really great spot to have some drinks, especially during the warmer summer nights, and the restaurant just looks beautiful inside. It has an open floor plan, and you really get a great view of the décor from everywhere in the restaurant. We sat down and ordered some wine, and my uncle ordered us some cheese steak egg rolls while we perused over the rest of the menu. Unfortunately for us, and especially in my opinion, the cheese steak egg rolls were the best part of the meal. They were super crunchy, fried to perfection, and the whiz sauce that they were served with was amazing.

We all ordered our respective meals, without much help from our server who seemed out of sorts. I am not sure if he had ever served anywhere before Catelli Duo opened, but he was extremely inept in many ways. He didn’t spend much face time with us at the table, he left our drinks sitting on the bar for a long time before bringing them to us one at a time, and he didn’t seem to know the menu very well. I had ordered a bowl of the lobster bisque, and the veal carbonara, a signature dish of theirs. Catelli Duo offers two different sizes when it comes to appetizers, one being a small plate style, and one being a more social style for more people to share.    

I was really excited to try the rest of the food because the meal had started on such a high note with the cheese steak egg rolls. Unfortunately, the lobster bisque didn’t live up to the expectations. It was lukewarm when it came out, and although it had pretty good flavor, I was less than impressed with it. It didn’t have enough cream in it to really make it a good bisque, and I thought it was really strange that you would have chunks of crab in a lobster bisque. I know lobster is expensive, but if that’s the case then make a crab bisque instead. Don’t call it a lobster bisque and then put crab in it. 

After the disappointment in my soup, I was hoping my veal carbonara wasn’t going to give me the same feeling. It wasn’t as bad as the soup, but it really wasn’t good either. The veal wasn’t well seasoned at all. The carbonara sauce was pretty bland as well. The pasta was cooked well, but that was really the only thing good about the dish. It was a severe disappointment. My cousin's husband had ordered a stuffed veal chop saltimbocca and not only did it come out raw in the middle, but it wasn’t stuffed with anything. The waiter then tried to explain that saltimbocca isn’t stuffed, but that isn’t right. The manager came over and said that it should have been and he would take it off of our bill. 

I decided to give them one last chance for dessert, and I am glad that I did because it made the experience a tiny bit better. My girlfriend and I decided to split the baked Alaska. It looked beautiful when it came out with the perfectly toasted meringue on the outside. Inside was some delicious vanilla ice cream and a tasty little piece of brownie on the bottom. The caramel sauce on the bottom was nice, but the brownie was a bit too hard and the dish overall lacked the flair of a traditional baked Alaska. 

Two pints for Catelli Duo. I had really high expectations for Catelli Duo based on knowing that the chef that used to run Catelli's was still in the kitchen and he had a hip new place to work with. Unfortunately though I don’t think that they are operating at optimal levels right now. Hopefully they will get their act together in the next few months and it will be better the next time I go back. For now I can’t tell you go to there after the experience that I had, but I will keep you posted if they redeem themselves on my next visit. From what I have heard in the past few months, things have improved in the food department over there. They seemed to have remedied some of their kinks from what I have been told, so I am looking forward to giving them a second chance. Check it out and let me know! Cheers!

Fall is in the Air...

Midtown Village Fall Festival

http://www.uwishunu.com/2012/10/our-guide-to-the-2012-midtown-village-fall-festival-returning-to-13th-street-this-saturday-october-6-food-beer-garden-presidential-dunk-tank-sidewalk-sales-crafts-and-more/ 

When my girlfriend's sister came to visit this fall, we decided to go to the Midtown Village Fall Festival to see what it was all about. She was visiting on her fall break from college, and we walked around starting around 12pm. We took in all the vendors up and down the different streets that were blocked off. There were restaurants serving food, shops displaying their products for sale, live bands, beer trucks, and tons and tons of people. I wanted to scope out all the food choices first before deciding what I wanted. There were some awesome choices available, so my girlfriend and I decided to split a couple things.

The first thing that had caught her eye was a truffled grilled cheese being offered by Jamonera, a fairly new Spanish tapas bar that replaced Bindi. We had high hopes for it based off of the description, but the truffled grilled cheese was a disappointment. It didn’t have very much cheese on it, and the bread wasn’t anything special. I definitely still intend to have a meal at Jamonera in the future because I have heard some great things about it, and I don’t think the grilled cheese was indicative of what they have to offer.

Since we were both really hungry after the grilled cheese was finished, we walked around a bit more until we found something that sounded delicious to both of us. We walked up to the tent in front of a place called Jake's Sandwich Board and ordered ourselves a 50/50 to share. Jake's won best sandwich in Philly magazine for their roast pork, so you know their sandwiches are killer. The 50/50 was a sandwich with roast pork, crispy bacon, sharp provolone cheese, and sriracha mayo sauce. This sandwich was absolute heaven. The bacon was extra crunchy, the cheese was incredibly sharp, and the spiciness of the sriracha brought a whirlwind of flavor to each and every bite. We also tried some chocolate covered bacon from Jake's. My friends know from our last Christmas party that I will dip anything and everything into chocolate as I did at the Christmas party in the chocolate fountain. The chocolate covered bacon was pretty good, but I think it had a bit too much chocolate on it. If the chocolate shell had been a little thinner I think it would have been amazing. 

The Midtown Village Fall Festival was a pretty awesome time. They had an amazing band playing for hours that was like a mix between a soul group and a jam band. There was something for everyone at the festival and I think it’s a really cool place to hangout. Be on the lookout for more festivals in Philly all year round! Cheers!

Restaurant Week Flop...

La Famiglia

8 South Front Street

Philadelphia, PA 19106

www.lafamiglia.com/‎ 

Restaurant week always has its up and downs for me. There are some places not worth going to because you can get the meal that they offer for the same price all the time, and there are some places that succumb to terrible mediocrity when the pressure of restaurant week arrives. Some places are just as good as they always are and the only thing that changes is the price of the food. Those are the type of places that I am looking to find, and unfortunately I made a bad choice for the first week of restaurant week in the fall of 2012. My girlfriend, her sister, and two of her friends from work and I headed to La Famiglia in Old City on a Friday night in hopes of a great Italian meal.

Once we all arrived and were seated, we all ordered some wine and perused the menu. Our waiter was very nice, and enjoyed flirting with all the women at the table, but he would become more and more nonexistent as the meal went on, so unfortunately for him, his tip suffered because of it. We all made our choices, some people switching because the waiter told them they were ordering too much starch, and we sat back and waited for our food to arrive. I had ordered the lasagnette for my appetizer, a small portion of lasagna. It was the best part of the meal for me. The pasta was very tender, and the sauce and meat were dispersed nicely throughout. The sauce was very tasty.

The mushroom and mozzarella risotto was a severe disappointment for me. I thought it was going to be spectacular, but it was really not good. It wasn’t creamy or cheesy, and there was next to no mushrooms or sausage in it. It honestly tasted like regular old rice cooked in chicken stock. I was really disappointed by this. 

I thought the idea of the dessert sampler that they offered was great, but the execution was pretty poor. Only one of the desserts on the tray was good, and the other two were pretty bad. One tasted purely of the alcohol used in it, which I believe was Kahlua, and the other was just a pile of mush with a fruit topping. The one that was good was like a little mini cheesecake. It was light and fresh, and had a really nice bite to it from the raspberry sauce that it had on top.

One pint for La Famiglia. The food just was not as good as it was hyped up to be. I know it was restaurant week, but the quality could not change that drastically, especially because they were not even really busy. I will say that the owner or manager, whomever it was, was very accommodating when we asked to split our check. That was a plus, but the waiter had so badly fumbled in the handling of our table, and the food was so incredibly mediocre, that I can't recommend this place to you in good conscience. If you do happen to try it, please let me know your thoughts. But it definitely isn’t worth your time or money in my opinion. Cheers!